Type Directors Club Debuts World’s Best Typography in New York

At its annual award ceremonies this week at Cooper Union, the Type Directors Club opened The World’s Best Typography: The Type Directors Club 63rd Annual Typography Exhibition, a gallery exhibition that combines the juried results of this year’s Annual Typeface Design Competition, TDC 2017, and the Annual Communications Design Competition, TDC63.

The exhibition is on display in the downstairs gallery at 41 Cooper Square through August 10. Admission is free, open Monday to Saturday 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, and Sunday noon to 6:00 pm. At 6:00 pm on Tuesday, August 8, competition chairs Joe Newton and Angela Voulangas will host a free, after-hours one-hour guided tour of the exhibition.

The exhibition displays the best fifteen typefaces designed during 2016, which the judges selected from 230 entries from 41 countries. In all, ten countries are represented in the show, with multiple typefaces from Germany, the United States, and France.

Among the standout typefaces identified by the judges are Nordvest by Nina Stössinger, Lingering Fonts by Zhang Weimin, Salvaje by Cristian Vargas, and the Qandus typeface system, which incorporates three different writing systems, designed by an international three-person team. See examples of each of these and the judges’ comments on the work here.

The larger portion of the exhibition features award-winning work from the TDC63, the communications design competition, including posters, book covers, book design, exhibition design, identity campaigns, and motion titles that represent outstanding uses of type. The show includes over 200 selections from 29 countries, which were selected by an independent panel from nearly 1,800 entries. See the photos of the show here.

Hoodie covered in calligraphy by Mariana Castellanos for Just Another Unicorn.

In the experimental design category, the judges chose Mariana Castellanos’s calligraphy-covered hoodie displaying names of Brooklyn neighborhoods for Just Another Unicorn, on display near the entrance to the show. Poster selections include dramatic work by Stuttgart’s Sascha Lobe and Sven Thiery, Juan Carlos Pagan, Triboro, and designers from Berlin, Valencia, and Toronto.

The exhibition is interactive in the sense that visitors are encouraged to pick up and peruse paperback books, magazines, and other paper media, including the massive Barneys book by Rizzoli, Design Army’s oversized folded annual report for the Human Rights Campaign, and the make-your-own-alphabet-from-rubber-bands book cover by Taiwan’s Yan-Ting Chen. Read about the innovative type that won the award for Best in Show here.

Gallery view including posters designed by Amsterdam’s Vincent Vrints for Studio Dumbar and Design Army’s giant annual report for the Human Rights Campaign.

Close up of book jacket design by Yan-Ting Chen for Taiwan’s NTUST Architecture annual design portfolio.

Student work from Taiwan, New York, Dusseldorf, and Beijing is featured in the back room of the gallery, along with a video loop of the motion winners and an interactive display by Jon Kudos, which shows visitors locations and details of all the award-winning work on a world map.

Interactive display of the show’s award-winning work by Jon Kudos.

Dan Rhatigan of Adobe Typekit served as the chairman of the typeface design competition with a jury that included Berton Hasebe, Brendán Murphy, Ksenya Smarskaya, and Alice Savoie. Joe Newton and Angela Voulangas co-chaired the communications design competition, which had the following jury — Spencer Charles of Charles & Thorn, Stewart Devlin of Red Peak, Xerxes Irani of Amazon, Alejandro Paul of Sudtipos, Ben Schott, Janine Vangool of UPPERCASE, and Deb Wood.

The Milan-based design firm Leftloft created the identity for the competition, exhibition and the publication, which will be released later this year.

Look for the Leftloft poster on the corner of Third Avenue and Seventh Street.

The Type Directors Club works with an international team of schools and art associations throughout the world to bring the award-winning work to audiences globally. The work in this exhibition has been shown in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Seoul since April 2017, and is currently on display in Warsaw and Madrid simultaneously with the New York show. The exhibition will be on display in San Antonio, Jakarta, Bangkok, Boston, Osaka, Montreal, and Bielefeld, Germany in August and September.

Type Directors Club is the leading international organization supporting excellence in typography, both in print and on screen, with professional and student members throughout the world. This show by the Type Directors Club, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary, represents the 63rd communication design competition and the 20th typeface design competition.

Miriam Rieger’s design for a book and poster set about synesthesia, which received the second-place award for student work (Mediadesign Hochschule Munchen).

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The Type Directors Club is the leading international organization whose purpose is to support excellence in typography, both in print and on screen. Through our annual competition and exhibition and frequent salons and workshops, we hope to celebrate the current stars of the typographic field and educate its future leaders. Learn more about the club here or become a member to help us give back to the community and to become a part of our history.